With Fox News reporter Peter Doocy, White House Press Secretary Jen Psaki had yet another tough go. On Tuesday, Doocy attempted to pin her down on the continuation of the juvenile immigrant detention facility previously named as “kids in cages” by the Biden administration.
Psaki said, “This is not kids being locked in cages.” This is children, this is a facility that has been opened, it will meet the same guidelines as other HHS facilities, It is not a clone, definitely not, it is never our intention to replicate the past administration’s immigration policies, but we are in a situation in which we can not remove unaccompanied minors at the border.
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Now, at today’s press conference, as Doocy circles back to the topic, you can see Psaki immediately wince upon hearing the same line of questioning.
This is, Ms. Psaki, the “circling back” we were promised.
“You didn’t think it was ‘kids in cages,'” Doocy directed in. We’ve seen a few pictures of the containers now. Is a better explanation available? Is it ‘children in barrels’ rather than ‘children in cages’? What is the definition of this facility by the White House?’
“Well,” she answered. “Let me provide a wider overview of what’s going on here. We have a lot of minors that are unaccompanied, children who come into the country without their families.
Why would they do it? Will it have something to do with the restoration of DACA’s anti-law compliance orders by the Biden administration?
‘Why we don’t do,’ she said. What was done by the last administration was to divide those children, to rip them from their parents’ arms at the border. We don’t do that. That’s just unethical. And that is not this administration’s strategy.
As president, Donald Trump denied that he was in support of child separation, saying that he had put a stop to it.
Trump said, “I’m the one who stopped it.” “President Obama had separation for children.”
Obama-era officials denied that the president they served was split from parents by children.
“That was not achieved by the Obama administration, no. We didn’t isolate the children from their parents,’ said Cecilia Muñoz, former Obama domestic policy counselor, to NPR. “It is a new decision, a policy decision placed in place by the Attorney General’s Office, which Muñoz said “places us in league with the most barbaric regimes in the history of the planet.”
“They had cages installed,” he said. You know, they used to say that I had the cages installed. And then in a certain newspaper they had a photo, and it was a picture of these awful cages, and they said, look at these cages, they were designed by President Trump. And then they were determined to be built in 2014. That had been him. They’ve built cages.
The “kids in cages” narrative is a long-standing rhetorical game played by Trump’s critics about whether it’s the same thing as “child-parent separation” to isolate children from adults in massive detention centers for their safety.
Our immigration system is built on a carceral framework. It’s no accident that challenging how we approach both these issues are considered “controversial” stances.
They require reimagining our relationship to each other and challenging common assumptions we take for granted.
— Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez (@AOC) February 23, 2021
AOC tweeted on Tuesday, “This is not okay, never was okay, never will be okay-no matter the administration or party.” Our immigration scheme is built on a foundation for carcasses. It’s no mistake that ‘controversial’ positions are considered to challenge how we handle any of these concerns.
It’s only 2 mos into this admin & our fraught, unjust immigration system will not transform in that time.
That’s why bold reimagination is so impt.
DHS shouldn’t exist, agencies should be reorganized, ICE gotta go, ban for-profit detention, create climate refugee status & more.
— Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez (@AOC) February 23, 2021
It’s just 2 mos into this admin & in that time our fraught, unequal immigration system won’t turn,” she railed on.” That’s why audacious reimagination is so critical. DHS should not exist, organizations should be reorganized, ICE must go, ban detention for benefit, establish status for climate refugees, and more.
Multiple administrations have made the callous choice to lock up thousands of children seeking refuge in the United States of America.
As long as we see people seeking a better life as “aliens” instead of fellow human beings, our immigration system will continue to fail us. https://t.co/xE1lmgSnJj
— Ilhan Omar (@IlhanMN) February 24, 2021
“The callous decision to lock up thousands of children seeking asylum in the United States of America was created by several administrations,” Squad member Ilhan Omar said.
Multiple administrations have made the callous choice to lock up thousands of children seeking refuge in the United States of America.
As long as we see people seeking a better life as “aliens” instead of fellow human beings, our immigration system will continue to fail us. https://t.co/xE1lmgSnJj
— Ilhan Omar (@IlhanMN) February 24, 2021
